One important way of defining adverbs is to define them as a residual category. And this might lead us to believe that they cannot be all that important, since they are simply what is left over….

However, these “leftovers” express different circumstances in a sentence. They can indicate place, time, the speaker’s attitude towards what is being said, the manner in which something is said, and so on.

The residual category of adverbs often contains the crucial word in establishing the meaning of a sentence:

• “Jeg vil ikke med” – The speaker wants the opposite of coming along.
• “Det gik glimrende“ – It went splendidly
• “Du løber for hurtigt” – The person is not just running fast, but too fast.

Our adverbs modify entire sentences, verbs, adjectives and other adverbs. In this blog post, we will now move up to the primary sentence level and study a particular group of adverbs, namly attitude adverbs.

Attitude adverbs indicate the speaker’s attitude towards what is being said. The speaker may have a positive or negative attitude, or the truth of what is being said may be called into question. We will now take a closer look at three selected examples: lige, altså, sgu.

LIGE

“Peter, gider du lige at hjælpe mig med det her?”

= “Peter, could you just help me with this?”

What is actually going on here? The speaker is being polite. They show consideration for the other person’s time by indicating that they will not take up much of it. The request is being downplayed.

ALTSÅ

Here, the speaker emphasises how things are:

• “Det har jeg altså ikke sagt”
  = “I didn´t say that, actually”
  
• “Det må du altså undskylde, det var ikke min hensigt.”
  = “I really must apologise for that; it wasn’t my intention.”
  

SGU

This is a little swear word used to emphasise an attitude or feeling, and also to express surprise or disbelief.

• “Han har sgu vundet.”
  
  Here, the speaker may be expressing surprise:
  “He’s actually won!”